Sutton & Epsom will be happy to see the back of 2011 after falling to another defeat.

Poor defence saw their young side lose 34-17 to Beckenham at Rugby Lane on Saturday despite two tries from No8 Felix Symonds and another from winger Charlie Purvis.

It leaves Sutton needing a miracle to survive relegation with 14 defeats from 14 games in London One South this season leaving them 14 points adrift.

It wasn't for lack of effort that they didn't record their first win on Saturday but their poor tackling let them down.

Things started badly when a sharp break out of defence by Beckenham ended with the Sutton back line waving lock George Daniels through for the opening try, which was converted.

But Sutton came back and, from a scrum five metres out, Symonds picked up and with great determination drove in at the corner, though the conversion was missed.

Sutton continued to press but a speculative kick out of defence was made a complete mess of by Sutton’s defence and Beckenham’s centre Laurence Headlam snatched the loose ball and ran in wide on the left.

Headlam repeated the trick for another unconverted try minutes later but Sutton showed character to take the game to the visitors and a huge charge by Gary Nash gave them position and, following a series of penalties, Symonds charged in for his second try to make the scores 17-10 at half time.

They saw a chance for a shock win when Beckenham's Pete Thorne departed following an awful high tackle on Sutton scrum-half Jonjo Wadwa and Purvis's try soon after was converted by Kevin Richens to level the scores.

But Nash was then yellow carded and Beckenham started to edge clear, with Headlam completing his hat-trick and then Alex Jones and BJ Tarbie making the score more comfortable than it was.

It was the story of Sutton's season so far, determined effort but nothing to show for it after 80 minutes.

They are back in action on January 7 when they travel to Portsmouth.